


A Four Letter Word

by myticanlegends



Category: The Young Elites Series - Marie Lu
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-The Rose Society, Sibling Love, The Darkness(tm)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 12:17:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13834116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myticanlegends/pseuds/myticanlegends
Summary: In which love, hate, and loss might be the same.Adelina Amouteru is queen. She should have been happy but it feels as if happy isn’t even an obtainable feeling. She is queen and she is bitter and she has lost so, so much. The Darkness inside suffocates her and she never felt so alone.Magiano stays. Adelina only wishes that Violetta could have as well.





	A Four Letter Word

The throne room was empty. The throne itself was cold. There were no attendants who stayed by her side. No one entered with messages or foreign dignitaries. She had no advisor as Enzo had and refused to have one. She would make all decisions on her own. The kingdom was full of fearful energy and movement and yet if you took a look at the empty room you would assume the country had long been abandoned.

Adelina noted all of this with resignation and a cold detachment. She didn’t need people anyway. The kingdom was hers and she would run it the way she pleased and that alone.

It’s better off this way, the voices in her head told her. You have won. This is victory.

There were times where Adelina looked over the empty throne room and thought of Violetta who she had loved more than anyone but attacked when she was trying to help. Or of Enzo who she onced loved but used to destroy hundreds of lives and ships. Or of Raffaele who was once her mentor but who she tortured in the streets of the city. Or of Gemma who she once trusted but killed. She thought of Michael and Dante and Lucent and even Queen Maeve. They had all betrayed her and she exacted revenge.

Victory was as empty as the throne room.

They deserved what they got, the voice in her head told her and Adelina agreed.

The throne room door creaked open and she was surprised as she always was that Magiano still bothered checking in with her. He had gotten his money. Her traitorous heart beat a little faster when seeing his slitted eyes.

Adeline also thought of him sometimes when sitting on the cold throne and looking over all she had created. Magiano who she had rejected despite the calm he brought her. 

Only Enzo, she reminded herself but she also didn’t listen.

Magiano was the only one still here in the empty throne room. With him she didn’t feel so lonely yet she also never felt more alone. His presence reminded her that he was the only one left. The rest had left her and Adelina liked him even more for staying.

She watched him approach with a mask of straight lips and calculating eyes. Loving and caring had only brought her ruin.

“Your highness,” Magiano bowed when reaching her throne.

“Magiano,” Adelina greeted back and she took care to keep her voice carefully neutral.

“How are you?” he pushed on.

Adelina was silent for a moment. He asked this every day. It was a mundane question but he knew what she had done to get here and he knew about the terrifying illusions that plagued her. It wasn’t a casual question with him, he wanted a real answer and the idea that he cared scared her almost more than her father constantly in the corner of her vision. He never got the answer he wanted because she couldn’t bring herself to tell the truth.

Lonely, she wanted to say. 

To her own surprise the words fell from her lips because she couldn’t hold them back anymore. “Victory was never suppose to feel this hollow.”

Magiano smiled and she suddenly felt angry because she wasn’t supposed to say that and the gods forbid he was happy with this information. 

He wants you to suffer, the voices in her head automatically told her. 

“You won. You control a whole kingdom and you’re the queen,” he reminded her and Adelina almost laughed because that’s what the voices in her head had been telling her this whole time. But then he added, “but it’s okay to feel that way.”

The voices had never told her that before. They told her that she should be happy and to get it she needed to conquer more and more and Adelina agreed but she also didn’t think it would help. It would not get her back the people she had lost. 

Adelina was angry at Magiano because didn’t he want her to be happy?

Her eyes narrowed and if he sensed the tension in her figure, he continued anyway.

“Everyone needs someone,” he said, slashing at what she had been thinking but never said. “Even the White Wolf.”

“I have you,” she said.

“Yes,” Magiano agreed. “You have me.”

They seemed to both wait for the other to say something before he finally spoke again, hesitatingly as if worried he would be hurt or she would lash out as she always did. “Maybe you should reach out to your sister.”

“She left me,” Adelina said bitterly. The voices agreed.

“She left who you have become,” Magiano said sagely, wise beyond his years. Adelina wondered what had happened to his greed and laughter and then wondered if she had somehow managed to kill that too.

The voices in her roared and shadows crept into her vision. Adelina had been through this enough to know what was about to happen. Her anger controlled her- her anger was her.

“This is who I am,” she said, standing up sharping, telling the shadows desperately in her mind to retreat. “This is who I have always been before I was repressed and before I was hunted for my abilities. Violetta had kept this from me, she doesn’t like who I am, never has. She,” Adelina spat out. “Is part of the enemy.”

“You miss her,” Magiano said, unaware of the darkness threatening to overwhelm them.

Adelina hated that it was true. But she needed him to leave, she needed everything to leave and just go away, before she did something she didn’t mean to. She didn’t trust the darkness but it was what had led to where she was today. Queen. Killer. White Wolf.

Pain began edging her way into her brain and she turned to snarl at Magiano, not having noticed she had turned away in the first place. He looked worried, stepping forward with a hand out as if to help her. “Stay away!” she growled.

He did. The shadows did not.

But Magiano didn’t leave.

Instead, the shadows fell upon her as she stumbled to the ground, and Adelina wondered if this had been their goal all along. If the darkness what not her and that one day it would overwhelm her until the world was shadows and death. Her brain felt like cleaving in two.

When she came to consciousness, there was a familiar brown, many-ringed hand on her shoulder and Magiano kneeling by her side. The shadows were gone, only the boy who had stayed. The only one who had stayed.

“I miss her,” were the words that pitifully slipped from her lips instead of a sharp command to shove him away. It felt like a whimper.

“I know,” Magiano whispered, his other hand moving to stroke her pure white hair.

“The entire world could burn and I would still love her,” Adelina admitted.

“I know,” Magiano said, sounding sad.

Adelina couldn’t help but be sad too. The emptiness inside her, usually filled with anger and hate, never felt more prominent. 

Bitterness quickly moved to cover it as if sadness should never be felt. Violetta had left her. She had likely never cared. She had repressed Adelina’s abilities for years and let her father hurt her for so long. For so long, she had been the only one worth trusting.

And Adelina missed her. A feeling that shouldn’t be felt either, when she could have been angry or bitter instead. But it cleaved a spot in her heart that she couldn’t fill with her darkness. Violetta had never been a dark person.

No wonder Violetta had hated her.

“I hate her,” Adelina tried saying in return.

Magiano said nothing. He didn’t seem to believe her either.

**Author's Note:**

> It’s my New Years Resolution to finish everything that I have left unfinished. I know, it’s a couple months after New Years but isn’t this supposed to be a year round thing? Evidently, I might actually have resolve.
> 
> I began writing this a year ago and I have no clue where it was headed. Now that Midnight Star has come out, I was able to hint a little bit more at Adelina’s feelings but because I DID start writing after Rose Society, that’s when this takes place. 
> 
> Short and sweet, I hope? If not sweet, short and satisfying?


End file.
